IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2015 - 36

a new epistemology. As such, it
demands a new ethics, for how is
it possible to evaluate a course of
action with a defective and over-simplified understanding of causation?
We seem to have kept the gadgetry
and slid away from the part of cybernetics that deals with how systems

coordination, and it was followed
by a recognition of the need to find
a self-corrective mechanism that
would sustain peace. The early work
opened the door to a new understanding of the unity of life on this
planet and the tremendous complexity of interconnections and interdependencies. This must be
carried into education and
into everyday experience,
so the next generation
is not fixated on the linCybernetics challenges us to look
eal command and control
at the world we live in as living
model. Until cybernetics can
project the description of a
and interactive, as growing,
new ontology that necessarily entails a new ethic, it's
learning, and changing over time.
not surprising that the general public is in denial.
Cybernetics challenges
function. Academic departments
us to look at the world we live in as
remain separate and rivalrous, govliving and interactive, as growing,
ernments are unable to agree, and
learning, and changing over time,
even after descriptions by scientists
requiring that we behave not as
who invite us to look at the planet as
masters but as part of that world.
a living system with a certain capac"The unit of survival," Gregory Bateity for self-correction (which can
son used to say, "is the organism in
however fail, for living systems can
its environment." Humanity cannot
die), large numbers deny that we are
survive alone. When you begin to
massively damaging the planet. We
think in terms of whole systems,
remain unable to arrive at a common
instead of being the owner of whatunderstanding of what must be done
ever it is, a garden or a child, or
but can only be done cooperatively.
even a computer, you begin to think
Cybernetics is not an add-on. It
of yourself as a part of the system
is a new foundation, the possibility
that includes you, hopefully as
of a new kind of "common sense."
learning from the system, adapting
It came out of World War II, when a
to it and evoking some adaptation
sense of shared danger demanded
in the system.

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

As I have thought back, recalling Norbert Wiener in my childhood, I still have a paradoxical
sense: on the one hand, great
brilliance, which we are celebrating, but on the other, a limited
impact. He changed the mechanics of the world, but did he change
the cognition of the world? Have
we arrived at the point of looking
at ourselves as parts of larger
systems on which we depend?
Have we learned that stability is
a matter not of stasis but of selfcorrection? If in refocusing on
Wiener we can remember that he
cared about communication, that
he worried about the effect of his
work on human life, we may be
at a point where we can use his
vision to understand our shared
human experience and how we
need to live our lives.

Author Information
Mary Catherine Bateson is Visiting
Scholar, Sloan Center on Aging and
Work, Boston College. Home: P.O.
Box 10, Hancock NH 03449. Email:
mcatbat@gmail.com. Website: http://
www.marycatherinebateson.com/.

Acknowledgment
This article is an abridged version
of a Keynote delivered at the IEEE
2014 Conference on Norbert Wiener
in the 21st Century (21CW) in Boston, MA, June 24-26, 2014.

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september 2015

http://http:// http://www.marycatherinebateson.com/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2015